


Aquinnah

by Anjou



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Relationship(s), Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2956481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anjou/pseuds/Anjou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A journey home for Mulder is one of discovery for Scully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aquinnah

*~*

As the ashes trail away from the urn and over the precipice of the cliff, a curling breath of wind catches some and hurls them back into his face. The grit of the residue bears within it a small, stinging slap, a bone fragment resounding against his cheek. An ironic smile curves the hard line of his normally relaxed mouth. This is so like his mother as she was in life, this sharp turning, the sudden lash of her anger. He should have expected it, this final testament to their relationship. The accumulated dust of her existence blowing into them is the only reason there are tears in his eyes. 

~*~

He stands at the prow of the ferry and looks across the broad expanse of water, his lean figure limned against the blue of the afternoon sky. They could have easily flown here, but he had surprised her by saying he'd rather take the ferry. She had slept much of the trip across the country, but had been awake for the long, mostly silent drive from Boston to Woods Hole. She had not known what to say. About him there now resides an air of expectancy that she cannot fathom,   
considering the circumstance. 

He leans against the railing, seemingly unaware of the cold. Above him, the seagulls wheel and beg, hovering, hoping for a handout. He spares them not even a glance. Occasionally, he looks down to where the water sluices away from their conveyance before returning his gaze to the horizon. 

She recalls how seasick he was on that lost ship in the North Atlantic, the tremble of weakness even before the true illness began to affect him. There is no indication of that man in his easy stance as the ferry dips and rolls, flowing across the surface of things. Now it is her equilibrium that is disturbed, and not by the roil of the ship or its sturdy engines as they chug below her feet. 

He is changed.

She tries to compel herself from the hard plastic seat inside the cabin to his side, but cannot. She knows that she should go and put her arms around him, try to share the grief he must be feeling. On this unusually bright February day, he is returning to the island that had been his childhood home to commit his mother's ashes to the sea. There are no remains of the sister he has loved and searched for so long, none that can be found.

She dreads the outpouring that surely awaits her, the accumulation of pain that will breach her walls as it did the night when she confirmed his mother's death as suicide. She closes her eyes against the memory of the wildness of his grasp, his arms crushing her so closely that she had been pulled down by the force of his emotion, bent backwards by his need. As if she were the only thing that mattered, the only thing he had left to cling to.

She shivers and buttons her coat over her breast, feeling the resistance when she does so. The overcoat is too tight, unwilling to accept the layers of clothing she surrounds herself with these days. Yet the chill sea air of midwinter, damp and familiar, still insinuates itself next to her skin. 

 

*~*

The rise of the shoreline is shockingly familiar. He has seen it so many times from just this angle, watched as it appeared out of mists and snow or through the haze of a summer fog, but he has consciously forgotten it. With a shock of clarity, he realizes that his dreams often find him standing on this deck, watching for that first glimpse of the arc of the land above the water. He has never felt the pang of recognition so sharply, nor felt it resonate within his heart before. As they approach the dock at Vineyard Haven, he feels the first sense of urgency he has had during this long trip. 

~*~

She does not think of him like this, does not think of him as a sea creature or a man with a home. His past is one long blur of sorrow, his goal some unknown terror of a possible future, looming but distantly. His seeming complacency in the face of such a terrible resolution, even if it is the one she has always anticipated, is incomprehensible to her. He approaches her from the prow of the ship with a bright light in his ever-changing eyes and urges her from her seat with a pull on her hand. He does not react to the jarring bump of their docking, does not seem startled by or unsure of anything he is doing.

They travel down the gangplank that leads to the empty asphalt parking lot. He is carrying both of their bags, the straps clasped loosely in one long-fingered hand. The other lightly holds the urn. He seems barely cognizant of its weight, the import of the burden he bears. Instead, his eyes are scanning above her hungrily, as if looking for someone. She is about to speak when a sudden sharp smile breaks over his face. 

"Caleb," he says aloud and she turns to see a man walking toward them from the ferry office, a matching smile on his face. He is smaller than Mulder and thinner, dressed in jeans and boots, his padded denim jacket a darker shade than the faded colour of his jeans. His black hair is brushed straight back off his brow and shows no sign of thinning or greying. 

Mulder moves swiftly around her and strides over to his friend, wrapping him in a hug. Somehow, Caleb has taken the urn and is holding it carefully upright against Mulder's back. Even in the heart of midwinter, his skin is brown and ruddy at the same time. 

"Fox," the man says. She can see the tears in his brown eyes. His face is from an ancient race of people, one she had not expected to see here. "Welcome home, Fox." 

*~*

The cliff at the top of the moor has changed with time and erosion, but he is pleased that his imagination had not enlarged it so that it would now appear diminished by reality. He has not been here for years; even in his dreams, he has denied himself this place. Today, he has earned the right to be here, earned it by honoring his own vows. He turns before walking up the headland path to see her standing at the edge of the snow-covered moor, oblivious to the wind whipping the dried saw-tooth grass against her long overcoat. She seems small and unsure in this place that he knows best above all others, despite time and distance. He smiles and holds his hand out to her, waiting until she joins him before he walks to the cliff edge. 

~*~

"Welcome to Aquinnah," the voice at her elbow says. She turns to the speaker, and with the long custom of habit, begins to look up. She is startled to be looking directly into the sharp brown eyes before her. He is clearly the most elderly person she has ever seen, this small man who stands in front of her. The sun gleaming off his uncovered white head is reflected in the field of snow behind him. The few people that are scattered around the pathway waiting had acknowledged her presence with murmured hellos, but other than Caleb, he is the only one to directly address her. The others are focused on Mulder, waiting for the release of Teena Mulder's ashes. The air is respectful, if not reverent, and somewhat surreal. Mrs. Mulder has requested that there be no funeral held for   
her, that her body be cremated and her ashes disposed of. In death, she is no different than she had been in life in her lack of consideration for her son.

This will be only ceremony Teena Mulder will have, her ashes being released into the wind by her son and witnessed by a group of Native Americans and herself. Their tableau in this field is largely silent, the only sound that of the wind as it rustles the grass and the heather that stands crisply frozen in the sharp winter light. The shuttered shops at the base of the rise add to the starkness of the scene. There are no trees on the verge to stop the unrelenting wind that rises   
over the edge of the cliff. Far below them, she can hear the unseen water as it crashes against the beach. 

"You must be Dana Scully," the man says. He is remarkably unlined for a man of advanced years. She has seen enough of humanity to believe that he must be more than ninety years of age. His white hair is tied back and tucked under his collar, but some of it has escaped and is blowing toward her.

She clears her throat and answers affirmatively, finding that she can do so after all. She had just smiled and nodded at Caleb when introduced. He, too, had seemed to know exactly who she is. 

"I'm Jacob Lester," the man says, extending a hand. It is smooth and dry in her hand, the veins prominently displayed. This, more than anything else, confirms the impression she has of his great age.

"Caleb's grandfather?" she asks, having at last found her voice.

The older gentleman smiles fondly. "Something like that," he says. "Is this your first time at Aquinnah?" 

"I've been to the Vineyard before," she answers. 

He smiles again. "But you haven't been here," his shod foot stamps the ground beneath them, "to Aquinnah."

She shakes her head and looks at her own feet in their thin, impractical shoes. 

"Fox hasn't told you about this place, has he?" Jacob asks.

"No," she says, not looking up. "I didn't realize..." she hesitates for just an instant, trying to think of the polite way to phrase this, "that the people were still here on Martha's Vineyard."

Jacob's laugh is almost like a bark. "Yes. We're still here. We've been here on this island for more than 4,000 years and maybe as many as 10,000." He leans into her a little more closely, sharing a secret. "The use of that phrase 'the people' has always struck me as a little self-conscious sounding. It's really more simple than that." He waves his arm around. "Here is the land. Those are the animals." He gestures between the two of them. "We are the people. Weren't your people 'the people' someplace else?" he asks mischievously. 

She smiles at him, a true smile even if it is small, then drops her eyes to the ground again. She catches a glimpse of the appreciative expression on Jacob's face as he watches her. "I guess we were."

"Fox is waiting for you," Jacob says, before he moves away to another knot of neighbors.

 

*~* 

The ocean is deep blues and purples at its depths, with green demarcating the shallows and the sandbars. The waves roll in one after another, breaking against the massive standing black rocks in sprays and plumes of white. The sound of the stones being tugged into the depths by the rolling backwash is a clattering babble. The high tide line is rimed with frozen salt and ice, glittering in the hard winter sun. It is unrelentingly primal in its beauty, the ocean at the base of the cliffs of Aquinnah. He holds her hand tightly for a minute, astonished that he is finally here and that she is still by his side. 

 

~*~ 

 

She had never considered that the sun could set over the ocean on the East Coast, but they had watched it set here over this beautiful winter beach after he released his mother's ashes to the wind. The view had reminded her of the grandeur of Big Sur, but it is different somehow, smaller, older. It is an isolated place, this Aquinnah, apart from the larger world of the island it inhabits. She did not cry and although Mulder shed a tear or two, she did not feel that he was   
overwhelmed by sorrow. His continued calm is a stunning contrast to her own feelings. She had watched the wild beauty of the surf roiling below her at the cliff's edge and felt a kinship with its seething. 

She is wandering around the cramped, plain confines of the Town Hall, reading the historical plaques while Mulder talks to the small assemblage. She can feel his eyes on her now and then as she moves around the clean, simple structure. When they were in Home, Pennsylvania years ago she had thought that he was embellishing his description of an idyllic childhood. She had seen the houses his family had owned here and elsewhere and drawn inferences from them. She has never considered that perhaps he doesn't talk about his childhood more because the loss of the simple innocence he described was sincere. 

"Small town, huh?" Jacob has returned to her side, bearing chocolate chip cookies in a napkin and a cup of warm and bittersweet tea. He is wearing a red and blue plaid shirt and workingman's boots. Underneath the shirt she can see the collar of his long-winter underwear. 

"It would seem so," she says quietly. She is unnerved by all that is taking place, still feeling adrift.

Jacob is watching Mulder across the room. He is standing in the middle of a small crowd of middle-aged women who are listening ardently to what he has to say. "I wish my Rose were here to see this," he says quietly. 

She doesn't know quite what to say at first, but after a minute she asks, "Was your wife a friend of Mrs. Mulder's?"

Jacob snorts, his eyes still on Mulder. "Those people had no friends." He turns to look at her, saying, "It's hard to imagine that Fox came from those people at all, but if you had known Katje you would have seen where Fox came from." He continues speaking, answering her unvoiced query. "Fox's grandmother was a good friend to both Rose and me. Katje loved Fox. She left him her house when she died. His father's house he sold, but he kept Katje's, although he hasn't been here in years." He smiles at the sight of Mulder laughing quietly at some comment, his face transformed by the emotion. "Beautiful Fox. That's what Rose used to call him. There never was a sweeter boy than Fox."

Scully finds herself smiling at the warmth of his memoriesand the love in his voice. "Sweeter than your grandson?" she teases gently.

Jacob laughs again. "Caleb is my great-grandson," he tells her. "And he and Fox used to get in all sorts of mischief together, mostly because Fox was so curious about everything." 

He pauses. "It's very unusual, I think, for white people to name their children so aptly, but Fox ... Fox is his name." He turns and catches a glimpse of her skeptical expression. "You don't believe me?" he challenges her. "The first time I saw Fox, he was lying in the long grass on the moor, watching me. I could feel him, but I couldn't place where he was, couldn't see him." He nods, lost in the memory. "First I saw a flash of his dark hair, then those big green eyes, just a slightly different colour than the grass around his face." His sharp eyes focus on her again. "He is just like the fox: a chameleon far smarter than all those who would prey upon him. Wouldn't you agree?"

Across the room, Mulder is holding an infant gingerly in his arms. He looks over at her, a shy smile on his face. Jacob's question hangs in the air, unanswered. 

 

*~* 

It has been a hard winter here on the island; the proof of it is piled on the obscured and snow-muffled landscape surrounding them as they drive. He can only remember rare snowbound winters from his childhood. The elevation of Noepe is so low that the winter storms are usually converted to rain by the heat of the Gulf Stream passing the island. It is oddly fitting, somehow, that this winter there are fields of snow on the cliff-top moor and below on the cranberry bogs on   
their way to his grandmother's up-island house. He is tired beyond belief but feeling the anticipation of going home, of bringing her home with him. 

*~* 

 

She is surrounded by mementos of a life that she scarcely knew existed until this day. Despite his shocking revelation on the first trip of their partnership so long ago, he has somehow never mentioned much of his family beyond Samantha. During their years of stakeouts and plane delays, he has heard all about her family, their lore and history, anecdotes and bad behaviour. He has always asked to hear these stories, and she had interpreted his silence to mean that he had no similar tales to tell. Perhaps it is as simple as this: she never asked. She does not think of him as being one of the many generations of his family. But here, inside the grace of this house, she is surrounded by the artifacts and evidence that belie that notion. She can see that in the soft smile that has remained on his face since he pulled up the driveway in the ancient Saab that Caleb drove to the ferry. Evidently it, like the house, is his.

He is below the deck of the back porch fiddling with the heat, trying to raise the temperature. No winterized cottage, this is a house, simple but expanded over the years, built to endure. A plaque on the salt-stained wood shingles above the front door reads est. 1765. It has a whale engraved below the date, a harpoon above it. There are pictures scattered around this bookshelf-lined room, pictures of Mulder and his sister that she has never seen, pictures of Mulder alone in his teen years, his mouth full of braces, his skin testifying to the ravages of adolescence. In one, his mouth is half-covered by his hand, a gesture she remembers making. There are pictures of Katje and Mulder's grandfather, Leo, from when they were far younger. Looking at Katje, she can see where Teena Mulder got her fair skin, where Mulder got his mercurial eyes. Leo is darker and more severe looking, with a haunted expression in his eyes that she also recognizes. She is grateful that these remnants of Mulder's life are left to him, preserved by his grandmother's bequest in a place that Teena could not touch with her selfish cruelty. She is appalled that Teena burned the evidence of her shared past with her children, as if none of it mattered once she died, as if both of her   
children were dead, not just the one. 

The furnace booms from somewhere nearby and she can hear the gurgle as more hot water is forced through the old-fashioned radiators. She pokes at the fire and considers putting another log on it, but lets it be, warming her hands over it. Her eye is drawn to an easel she assumes is Katje's, standing in front of the window that looks out at the snow-covered plain surrounding the house. Behind it, on a nearly hidden window seat, she finds a history of Martha's Vineyard,   
carelessly tossed there as if its reader expected to return. It is somehow emblematic of the feeling this place gives her. The house has an unlived in air, but still feels occupied somehow, not forlornly stopped in time. The old book is relatively dust free; Mulder must pay someone to take care of this place for him. She cracks the ancient spine and finds that it is well read, the pages thumbed and smudged with use. Jacob's cryptic comments of the day become clarified. Direct   
archaeological evidence proves that the Aquinnah Wampanoag have lived on this island they call Noepe for more than 4,000 years. They have hunted whale and fished, cultivated the wild grapes and roses that used to grow everywhere in the fertile soil. She has a sudden sharp image of Jacob standing at the prow of a ship, harpoon raised high in his hand. It seems right.

The air is warming around her, provoking a tired yawn. She leaves her overcoat on the coat rack as she wanders to the bedroom with her book. Mulder has situated her in the room that was his grandparents' and she readies herself to sleep, intending to read first. She has underestimated the level of exhaustion she feels, however, and barely reads the frontispiece before she falls into a deep slumber, the images of the day swirling through her mind in random order, like   
fish darting in and out of coves. Under the heaped covers of his grandparents' bed, below the blankets Katje made, she curls herself into a small ball, covers tucked around her carefully to ward off the ever-present chill. 

 

*~* 

The water is always cold at Aquinnah, the surging rush of it a sharp contrast to the warmest summer sun. The waves would push at him as he tried to enter the water, forcing him backwards toward the shore, then grabbing at his feet with hungry force, trying to pull him into their embrace. Past the breakers and the rocks, the falling away to the deep ocean just offshore is as steep as the cliff itself. He distinctly remembers the feeling of slowly sinking through the cool   
turbulence, vainly reaching with his feet for the sandy bottom. He and Caleb had decided to see how far away it truly was one summer's day. Caleb grew tired of the game early on, but he had never given up trying to achieve that goal, sinking down into the dark blue depths of the churning sea, always searching.

~*~

 

It is unbearably frigid on the beach, the wind howling off the water in the pre-dawn. Although sleep was restful the night before, she woke early and passed the time reading the history of the island. She was ready to go when he knocked softly on her door, surprised to see her awake. Her curiousity, combined with the rough wind off the surf, has blown away whatever remnants of sleep remained.

He is bouncing up and down on the heels of his feet, then bending, stretching out the long muscles in his legs. She is unclear why he needs to warm up after the walk up the cliff path then down the long wooden staircase to the beach, but she is also unclear on just what the agenda is today. Jacob was already waiting for them when they got to the beach and Caleb is nearby, stretching out as well. She turns her back on the ocean and stares at the cliff face, wishing that it were light enough for her to see. From what she has read, the cliff is striated with different colours and of an extraordinary age. Time and water have gouged away chunks of the earth and left the interior exposed. She wants to watch as the red clay becomes visible in the daylight. In her imagination, the cliff looks like the shimmering reflection painted on the water by the setting summer sun as it slides below the horizon, a fancy she has taken from the book she has been   
reading. She wants to see its colours awaken with the dawn.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" She is not surprised that Jacob has returned to her side. "Do you know about the legend of Moshup?" 

She nods in the cold winter light, not ready to pull her face out of the comforting warmth of her scarf.

"Ah," he says, "you've been reading Katje's books." He smiles. "She'd have liked that." He regards her again. "She'd have liked you."

She feels a sense of rising panic at his statement, which she tamps down by redirecting the conversation. "What is Mulder doing?"

"Mulder," he says with a short laugh, shaking his head disapprovingly. "The Aquinnah Wampanoag are called the People of the First Light. Fox is here to greet the sunrise in his sister's memory, then he and Caleb are going to run around the cliffs past the Light around the point, by Menemsha Pond, the bogs and then back down Moshup's trail."

"Is that part of a ritual?" she asks.

"The second part is purely Fox and Caleb's invention," Jacob says dryly. "The first is part of who we are, an observance we have made for unknown numbers of generations. We watch as the general starlight fades and reflect on the rise of the star that brings us life. It's a simple act of veneration." He turns to face in the direction of the still unseen sun and she joins him, cliff on one side, ocean on the other.

Mulder comes to stand behind her, his view of the dawn not obstructed by her. She can feel the warm heat of him sheltering her from the sharp ocean breeze. Caleb stands beside his great-grandfather. In silence, they watch as the midnight blue sky lightens then transforms with the dawn of the new day.

 

*~*

He has forgotten this as well, the beauty of the sunrise as it hovers below the horizon, obscured by the cliffs. He watches as the twinkling stars wink out one after another, seeming to be extinguished by the encroaching daylight, but knows that they are merely hidden by the larger light that rules the day. Samantha is there amongst the stars, obscured from his view, but present. He feels the brush of a gloved hand against his cheek and he looks down into her troubled   
face as she brushes the tears away. He clasps her hand tenderly and drops his head closer to hers, looking deep into her blue eyes. Without breaking his gaze, he peels the fabric away from her wrist to press a kiss on the white plane of her skin. Although his eyes return to the firmament above them, he does not relinquish her hand.

 

~*~

 

She and Jacob have only walked a third of the way up the cliff staircase when Caleb and Mulder disappear from view, running around the bend. They are climbing slowly, she out of deference to Jacob's age and because rushing would seem hasty and disrespectful. Her wrist still burns where Mulder kissed it; the soft warmth of his lips next to her veins sent the blood soaring to meet his kiss. When the sun was fully risen, he had looked at her for a long time before letting go of her hand and jogging to where Caleb waited for him. He had turned twice to mark where she was before he disappeared around the bend. 

"Fox was a lifeguard at this beach, you know," Jacob says to her conversationally. He has been observing her for a while.

"Really," she answers. 

Jacob nods. "Only the strongest swimmers get assigned to this beach. He always ended up having to save the fools and the drunks from dashing themselves against the rocks."

She ponders that statement for a moment, hesitating before she speaks. "The legend says that the rocks on the beach are Moshup's children, that he changed them into stone when the Europeans landed on the island."

Jacob nods at her. "Moshup was a hard father," he answers, "cruel and unforgiving, meting out a harsh punishment on the innocent due to some misguided sense of protection. The legend says that he believed it was the end of the world." He pauses, shaking his head. "It wasn't." 

"Where was the mother in all of this?" she asks, raising her voice to be heard over the sudden rush of the wind.

Jacob smiles, raising his hand to touch the swirling air. "Squant retreated around the bend of the island, where she weeps and howls for her lost children."

"She didn't try to save them?" she asks. 

"Maybe she did," Jacob says, "and we don't know about it. We do know that she retreated from the world, leaving them to the fate their father decreed." He looks at her quietly for a moment, then begins to climb the stairs again. 

"Do you know why it is that Fox hates his name?" They have traversed silently to the next landing on the staircase. 

"I assume that it was because he was made fun of."

"That is true," Jacob says slowly, "his name was sport for some of the children on the island, although not to us. My people believe that the other animals revile the fox, calling him cunning when he is just clever. Our legends teach us that the other animals prefer to believe that they have been tricked, rather than admit they have been outsmarted." He pauses, collecting his thoughts. "Do you know much about spirit lore?" When she shakes her head, he continues. "In many different Native American cultures, the fox is charged with the protection of the family unit. His role is to keep the individuals safe and to keep the family intact. It is his destiny, the role that he was born to fulfill." 

She is silent as he relates this cruelly ironic tale, its hearing bitter to her. 

"Fox has always felt the burden of his name, even before he knew the tale. Fate is often capricious with people. Fox was born on the day your people associate with the trickster." He glances over at her. "Born on Friday the 13th into a family he felt compelled to save, even when it was beyond his power." 

He nods, looking out at the water. "You should read up on fox lore," he tells her. "I believe Fox will be successful with his own family, one of his own making, now that he has been released from the bonds of the one he was born to."

She is left standing alone on the steps in the cold wind as he turns and continues the long climb to the top of the cliff.

 

*~*

The land has changed vastly since he last saw it, testament to the passing of time, the vagaries of the storms that shape the shoreline with no reference to the past, eroding memory with land. Several times he and Caleb have to stop and walk around inlet streams to keep their feet from freezing in the water and he is struck by how old they are now, remembering how fleetly they negotiated obstacles in their youth. Once or twice they have to backtrack to find a new path. The second time, they laugh until tears come to their eyes, leaning against each other weakly, then burst into a sprint at exactly the same time, racing, reclaiming the boys that they were.

 

~*~

 

She settles on the floor next to the fireplace, intending to continue reading the history of the island, but perusing the other options on the bookshelf in front of her. An elderly edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica lines two whole rows and she plucks out the volume that 'fox' can be found in. Her conversation with Jacob is rattling around in her head, needing to be pondered and considered, but she pushes it away, looking for distraction. On the bottom shelf of the bookcase   
she sees a row of unlabeled photograph albums, leather bound and heavy.

She pulls out the first of these to find elderly pictures of Katje and Leo nestled in white corners with yellowed glue holding them down. The pages are heavy black construction paper, rigid with age. The earliest pictures are beginning to degrade toward sepia. The names, places and dates of the occupants of the pictures are inscribed on the white borders of the photographs in an old-fashioned and European-looking hand. She flips ahead in the book and there are entry papers at the port of New York for Leo, Katje and their daughter Teena. Their papers are dated 1939. With a suddenly heavy heart, she turns back to the previous pages and notes how many of their silent occupants have closed parentheses after their names, their abruptly abbreviated life spans evidence of a   
cruel fate. The early photos of Leo in the United States capture a desolation of spirit that she has seen more than once, on the faces of those who have escaped a doom that their loved ones have not. 

Closing her eyes against the pain, she flips to the end of the book where she finds more pictures of Teena, now a graceful and lovely young woman. She returns the book to its shelf and takes the next volume, turning the pages until she finds photos of Mulder. Amidst the standard record of babyhood, she is startled to see many photos labeled 'Fox at Aquinnah' that depict a naked and brown toddler, frolicking among equally naked adults on the beach. There is a clay-daubed Mulder being chased by a laughing Caleb, both running past adults unconcerned by their own lack of clothing or the public airing of their wrinkles and scars. It does not surprise her that Bill and Teena are not in any of these pictures. Her eye picks out Katje and an older Leo, along with Jacob. Even in these early photos, his hair is mostly white. 

Eventually, Samantha appears with her own record of childhood events. She begins to be able to discern a pattern. The smaller, colour photos seem to be ones taken by others, probably Bill Mulder. The larger photos that capture Mulder, Samantha or the others candidly seem to be taken with an artistic eye. These are Katje's photographs, mostly in black and white. Her eye lingers over one of Mulder, who must be about ten years of age. He and Caleb are straddling a tidal   
pool at Aquinnah, the ripples carved in the sand visible below them. Mulder is long-limbed and coltish, tanned only one or two shades lighter than his friend. They are holding a starfish between them, lowering it so that Samantha can look at it. They are naked and innocent in the sunshine, Mulder turning with a smile to the camera, catching his grandmother in the act of taking the picture. His hair is falling in his eyes and he is squinting in the bright light. He has never known sorrow. She shivers at the thought and cannot bring herself to turn the page to look at the rest of the book.

On the other shelves she finds more books about the history of the island and Aquinnah specifically. She adds these to her pile of reading, curling up on the rug under a blanket, right in front of the fireplace. She is just out of range of any embers that might escape the fire screen when a knot pops in the flames, but close enough so that she can feel the tremendous heat on the surface of her skin. She opens the encyclopedia and reads the entry about foxes, learning that they are the smallest of the canids, known for their cunning and ability to adapt to any environment. Her head grows heavy on her hand as she reads and she lies down, propping the book up against the stack. 

 

*~*

He has begun to tire of the journey at a certain point, somewhere after they passed the Menemsha Pond and the bogs, moving over the land to Moshup's Trail. The air is a cold knife in his lungs and his muscles are burning. A glance in Caleb's direction tells him that his old friend is feeling much the same as Caleb grimaces then grins, urging them to move the pace forward. The faster they run, the sooner they can go home. He pictures her laying on the hearth, curled up   
with a book in the firelight, or perhaps dozing in its warmth. She is waiting for him. The image spurs him on and he passes Caleb on the narrow muddy track, ready to be there with her.

*~* 

 

Her first thoughts upon awaking are simple: she is warm, but she is thirsty. Her eyes adjust to the firelight and she realizes the inadvisability of having left the books so close to the fireplace and she jerks up, moving them away. She hears a snuffling sound behind her and turns to see a sleepy Mulder lying on the rug. He is outside her cover, looking as if he stumbled in from his run and just collapsed there next to her. His arms are crossed protectively across his chest, his heavy sweats mud-spattered. His cheeks are ruddy from the cold and under the clean smell of the winter air that surrounds him she can detect the scent of his exertion. He is blinking at her slowly, still half-asleep. 

"Hi," he rasps. "Nice nap?" 

She nods, wondering when she became so tongue-tied. She tosses the blanket aside making sure she covers the encyclopedia from view and stands, offering him a glass of water. He groans as he tries to get up and when she returns to the living room, he is stretching, trying to work his sore muscles into cooperating. She watches him for a few minutes and then wordlessly goes to get the Advil from her bag in the bedroom, making him take them on her return. 

She returns to the kitchen and begins to rummage around for some food. There are an astonishing number of choices. People have been leaving food on the back porch all day and she can see that more has been left outside the sliding doors. 

Mulder stumbles into the kitchen after her and makes himself a sandwich, watching her as she tries to organize the refrigerator. She is unable to figure out what his mood is and refuses to analyze things too closely, preferring the activity to silent contemplation. She makes herself a passable lunch, glancing up at the clock. She is astonished to note that it is after two o'clock in the afternoon. When she turns to make note of this to Mulder, she finds that he has left the room. She returns to the living room and sees that he has fallen asleep again, splayed out on the rug with one of the couch pillows under his head. He has stoked the   
fire, but she picks the blanket up off the floor and covers him with it, running her hand through his soft hair. 

She keeps guard over his sleep while she reads the pile of books about the island, curled into a corner of the couch. She has returned the encyclopedia to its place on the shelf.

 

*~* 

He is climbing hand over hand up the cliff face, just as he did the summer he was thirteen. In reality, he climbed with Caleb, but now, in the dark of his dreaming, he is transformed into his adult self. He can feel the smooth damp of the clay under his hands and feet, the occasional pinch of fossil or bone. He looks over the outcropping above him, realizing that it is mostly sand and not clay. It will not hold him. He moves laterally, trying not to be frustrated that it is taking so long. He can see how far he has come, knows that he is almost to the top, but his muscles are straining and he is tired. He could let go, but the fall is long, and, now and then, he gets a glimpse of her curved white leg where it dangles over the cliff edge, as she waits.

 

~*~ 

 

After Mulder wakes for good and showers, he insists that they go out to dinner at a nearby restaurant, despite the abundance of food in the kitchen. They are waiting for their dinner in a tiny restaurant in a tiny town called Menemsha. Her reading has told her it is the center of the small fishing fleet that remains on the Vineyard. The town looks as if it has come right out of central casting in Hollywood. There are ragtag trawlers docked along the harbor with broken lobster   
pots, coiled ropes and torn nets decorating the docks. Buoys are piled haphazardly everywhere and there is the sound of a clanging bell from the harbor as the channel marker bobs on the tide.

The restaurant itself is off one of these docks and the fishy smell of the air, even at high tide, is penetrating. To complete the scene, outside their window that overlooks the placid harbor, a fisherman sits on the round pylon of a dock, repairing a net with a thick needle and assured stitches. If he were only smoking a pipe, the picture would be truly perfect, but, because this is reality, he is smoking a fat cigar. The stink of it is probably the reason that he is sitting outside in the cold air, mending a net under a walkway light, rather than at home. 

Across the no-frills room, he is waiting to pick up their order of chowder. He is engaged in a conversation with the cook that she can occasionally overhear. They seem to have attended high school around the same time and are catching up on classmates. Mercifully, the cook seems not to know about or not to be acknowledging the tragic history of the Mulders. 

He spends the meal telling her how the Aquinnah Wampanoag believe Martha's Vineyard was created. Even though she has spent the day reading these tales, she lets him tell her again without interruption. In his voice as he relates the genesis tale of this place that seems enchanted, she can hear the how of the man he has become, this seeker of myths and oddities. He tells her of the giant Moshup, creating the islands off the coast of Cape Cod by dragging his foot through the rich soil at the bottom of the sound. The clumps of earth dropping off his toes as he pulled it from the water became Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands. Of all of these, because it was the most beautiful, Moshup chose Aquinnah as his home, living in a cave hidden around the bend of the mile-long cliff face. For food, he would grab the whales out of the water by their tails and smash them against the cliff; their blood stained the clay red. 

She eats her chowder and listens while he moves from tales of the ancient past to ones of his own. He tells her how he and Caleb used to dig for fossils in the clay, finding shark's teeth and embedded bones. They would present them to his grandmother and Jacob, proud of the evidence they had gathered to support the myth. As the stars come out somewhere in the night above the roof under which they sit, he tells her that Jacob is 102 years old and sailed on the last fleets of Aquinnah whaling ships. 

In the car on the way home, he tells her how he came to live at Aquinnah the summer before Samantha was born. Instead of going to Quonoquotaug in July and August with his parents when they usually rented the house to summer people, he went to Katje and Leo. His mother had been uncomfortable in the summer heat and she had stayed home, alone in the house at Chilmark resting, while she waited for Samantha to be born. That was the summer, just before his fourth birthday, that he met Jacob and Caleb and the rest of the Wampanoag. 

By the time they arrive home, she is dizzy with listening, dizzy with the knowledge of his unknown life and the history of this place she has never thought much about. She has a creeping sense of trepidation about what it is that he wants from her and she wants to flee, to find a way to get on a ferry or a plane and get away from this island. The words from the encyclopedia are running around in her head, mingling with her conversation with Jacob and she excuses herself to   
sleep, refusing to heed them.

 

*~* 

Here is something else he has forgotten, the clean smell of the ocean air underlying everything. In D.C., the river often permeates the air, but its essence is filled with the scent of earth, less pleasant than this sharp tang of salt. Perhaps, despite the years he has lived by the river, it is still less familiar. On the back porch, wrapped in the blankets from the bed he is not sleeping in, he contemplates the seemingly endless light of the stars. His whole life has been spent   
looking toward them, wondering what secrets they hold. His long curiousity about them seems like foreshadowing for these past few days, now that he has been transformed from someone who wanted to believe in eternity to someone who does. He wonders how she can sleep with the moon so full and bright above them. It has called him from his warm but lone bed, compelling him outside to stare up at it, baring his throat to its light.

 

~*~

 

When she wakes, she is still dizzy, but this time it is from lack of oxygen. She has been burrowing her head under the covers, trying to escape the soft brilliance of the moonlight that has crept into the room. She sits up in the swath of silver that falls across the bed and listens. Somehow, she knows that he is not in the house. This knowledge startles her, but does not truly surprise some secret part of herself. If she knew that he was not dead across thousands of miles,   
not once but twice, why wouldn't she know when he leaves the house in the middle of the night?

For the first time, she consciously acknowledges that some part of her does not want to know these things, that some part of her, the larger part of her, wants to remain singular. 

"I am happy," Jacob had said to her when they got to the cliff top, "that Fox has finally found his mate."

She had stiffened at his statement and his assumption, replying tersely, "He was married once."

"Was he?" Jacob had answered sharply. "Married is not necessarily the same as mated. His whole life, Fox has been denied his family. Would you deny him his mate?" 

She pulls the covers up over her head, trying to will herself to go back to sleep but her mind will not rest. It is too primal an idea to contemplate, this idea of being mated. It carries with it an implicit idea of fatalism that she does not believe in, one that she resists.

"I cannot give him a family," she had informed Jacob tensely, feeling the rebellious tears coming to her eyes. She hated exposing what was her own very private pain to this man, even if he fancied himself Mulder's grandfather. 

"Are you so sure of that, Dana?" Jacob had answered her. "You really ought to explore the meaning of your own name. Fate is capricious, yes, but you are still named after the Goddess your people believed was fertility herself. You don't know what kind of family you can have until you try." And then he had walked away, leaving her alone on the cold moor.

She is not sleeping, merely pretending to and she cannot stop wondering what he is doing in the middle of the night. She creeps out of bed, shivering in the dark living room. She can see the light of the moon flowing into the kitchen as she walks past the embers in the hearth, pausing to draw the heat of them into herself. Through the glass kitchen doors, she can see him standing still on the porch in the argentine light, his head tilted back in a reverent pose, as if he is   
bathing in the abundant moon and starlight that spills from the heavens above. He is wrapped in a blanket, his hair painted silvery white by the light, his sharp features softened by his beatific expression. Her reading of the encyclopedia comes back to her and she remembers that the common fox changes its fur from its reddish brown summer hue to winter white, a changeling's skill, a clever trick to fool its predators. She shivers again, creeping closer to the glass. The fox mates in midwinter, her mind quotes back to her. The fox mates for life.

 

*~*

Here is something he knows. There is a change in the atmosphere when she is nearby, a magnetic shift that draws him to her as unerringly as gravity. He can feel her watching him in the moonlight, worrying about him as she has these past days, these past years if he admits it. She is small, white and serious, with her heart-shaped face and her marine eyes, and he longs to envelop himself in her. Even if she will not have him, he will have no other.

~*~

 

She is suddenly sure that he knows she is here, that he has sensed her presence, tracked her from her bed to where she now stands. She also knows that if she turns and leaves he will not follow her, that he will wait forever for her to come to him. It irks her that he is so suddenly ready to change the nature of their relationship, as if he has moved forward without her, although it is to step toward her.

She does not want to be ruled by her primal self, does not want to be given by a fate she does not understand to this man. She has little left to give and if he takes what there is, she fears she will collapse into dust. She wants to turn and walk away from him, walk away from the cold seeping in around the doorway, walk away from his compounded sorrows. Although he has suddenly shed them, they still oppress her. 

She wants to, but she cannot.

She opens the door of the porch and steps outside with a gasp, the cold assaulting her senses. She has a sudden urge to call him by his true name, but the word is heavy and strange on her frozen tongue and she cannot form it. He is turning now in the bright moonlight, his hair a silvery corona bristling around his head as he smiles gently at her. He steps toward her, opening his arms and wrapping her in the blankets he is wearing. 

"Scully," he says quietly, "aren't you cold?"

She thinks that she has been cold for a very long time, but she says nothing. He has gathered her up against him, sharing his warmth with her, not taking anything from her, but she is poised, waiting for the trap to be sprung. Her arms are between them, bent up at the elbow, her fingertips facing her own body in a defensive posture. He brushes the hair from her face with his large warm hand, then runs it over her back, generating heat wherever he touches. He lifts her gently and places her cold feet in their thin socks on his warmer ones, so that she is standing on him. 

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asks and she looks up at him. 

He is tilting his head back again to watch the swirl of the universe above them, exposing his throat to her. An act of trust this gesture, one that places him at her mercy, should she so choose. He touches her with these simple statements, mesmerizes her with his faith in her and the sensual beauty of his form. She aches to touch him where he has made himself vulnerable to her, her own throat closing with longing. She hesitates, then gives in to this impulse, her hand reaching up from where it has been resting against her chest to touch the silvered line of his throat. She feels the shiver her action provokes and waits for the change to occur, waits for the emergence of the primal self she is sure lies under his skin. 

When he looks down at her, his expression is heavy-lidded and she can sense the whirling emotion in his eyes, even if she cannot see them. Under her hand, the beat of the pulse in his neck is jumping, although she cannot be sure it is not her own. As he begins to lower his head to hers, she lets her hand smooth up his face, trying to assure herself that he is still a man and has not been rendered into the spirit self she fears. 

His kiss, when it comes, is startling to her. No bruising pressure, no vulpine lunge for her throat greets her. He bends over and nudges at her lips with his nose, parting them slightly, then plucks at her upper lip with both of his, kissing it gently. His hands are cradling her head, covering her ears and closing her off from that sense, making her feel liquid in this silver world of his kiss. She is cognizant only of his touch, his thumbs rubbing her cheekbones as he pulls away from her mouth and looks at her, then returns to kiss her lower lip, savoring her. He draws back from her, his thumbs running across her mouth as he watches her silently,   
waiting for her response. He bends to gently kiss her nose. His fingers still caress her face, holding her like she is the most precious thing in the world. The blankets have fallen open over her back and she should be feeling cold, but she cannot feel the air around her anymore, cannot feel the draft, because something is moving inside her, seething like a hot spring trying to burst through the surface. 

He kisses her fully this time, his lips pressing against both of hers and her eyes drop closed. She realizes that he is not taking something from her, he is not demanding anything with his kisses. He is telling her how he feels. She collects his kisses, lets them trickle through her skin into that nearly empty reservoir inside herself. He whispers her true name against her lips and she feels that stirring again. His voice is harsh and low with longing, as if he is calling her out from the most secret place inside of herself, the one she keeps hidden even from herself. His kiss is longer this time and when she answers his call, opening her lips to   
receive him, the feel of his tongue slipping into her mouth makes her shudder; she wraps her arms around him, pulling his warmth closer. 

When they part again, she is breathless, her skin tingling where his hands have touched her, her mouth longing for more kisses. She cannot speak aloud, so she whispers his given name into the air between them and he drops his face to the curve of her neck, groaning with pain and longing against her. 

"Mulder," she says then aloud, running her hands through his hair, using the familiar name of his own choosing, "Mulder."

In answer, he kisses his way across her breasts through her clothes, urging her back toward the open door. "I want... I want..." he is saying against her and she knows what he wants. 

Together they blunder to close the door, catching the blankets in it and fumbling to remove them. She reaches up to him and kisses him feverishly, trying to get closer to him, needing to receive his kiss. He urges her into the living room, soothing her, trying to calm her hectic movements. She understands suddenly that she has been afraid of herself all along, of the vastness of the emotion now searing through her. 

 

*~* 

The waves at Aquinnah are fierce as they pound against the beach. Catching one of them to ride is an exhilarating, but delicate, enterprise. A second's miscalculation and he would end up tossed in the surf end over end with no sense of direction, until he was dashed against the shoreline, dizzy and breathless. It is a feeling he well remembers, one he does not want to revisit tonight. He has waited far too long for this moment to have it swept away in an antic rush of   
emotion. He tries to force his heart to slow down its frenetic pounding, tries to ease the urgent rushing of the blood in his veins.

~*~

 

She can sense that he is struggling with something as he breaks away from her kiss. He wraps his arms around her and murmurs her name again, running his hands up and down her back. He is trembling in her arms, but he quiets and pulls away, then picks up her hand, pulling it lightly as he takes a step backward, toward the bedroom. His eyes are an invitation, his expression serious and watchful. He wants something different than a mindless surrender to the feelings   
that are suffusing them both. When she takes a step toward him, his lips curve in the soft smile that she has seen so much of in these past hours, the one she has seen so rarely over the years. He turns away only to make his way through the patches of darkness, but stops when he nears the bed. 

The room is still awash with the brilliant light of the moon, a blaze of it falling across the bed. The edges of the room have fallen away into the shadows, lost in the lack of illumination. She holds him at the side of the bed with a hand on the small of his back, stopping him from turning toward her. She slides first one then the other of her arms around his middle, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, the tension of his muscles apparent through his clothes. She presses her face into his back, into the indentation of his spine near his heart. Her hands drift underneath his sweatshirt, gravitating toward the warmth of his skin. She   
travels around him without letting him leave the circle of her arms. She leans against his chest in the moonlight, her ear stopping to rest a moment over his heart. She can feel how it beats for her. She listens for the span of a few heartbeats, then smoothes the material up and away from his skin and kisses him there. 

"This is what I want," she says, laying her hand on his heart. She can feel his heartbeat echoing low against her belly where he lies pulsing, waiting for her.

This time he does swoop down to kiss her but there is no fear when he gathers her up in his arms because there is nothing being taken here that is not being given back. She feels a line of congress opening up between them, feels the sparks as they pulse and flow across the connection. He breaks away from her long enough to pull off the shirt that she has bunched up under his arms as her hands explore the warm, smooth planes of his chest. As he sits down on the bed   
and moves to pull her into the space between his legs, she unbuttons her pajama top, dropping it to the floor.

If she lives to be one hundred years old, she will never forget the expression on his face at this moment. His hands are still, frozen in their extended pose toward her. His eyes sweep over her torso, then up to her face, then back to her breasts in a hungry and astonished rush. Time is at a standstill for just this instant, stuttering to a halt while he regains his momentum. Then she feels the first contact of his fingers against her skin, the tips skimming over the   
sensitive skin of her belly as he circles her waist, pulling her close to him. She loses the ability to see his expression as he presses his face into the small valley between her breasts. His arms are sliding up the skin of her back, roaming from side to side, feeling every inch of her flesh that he can. She closes her eyes and revels in the sensation of his skin pressed to hers, of the freedom she feels right at this moment. 

He trembles against her breast as her arms close around him, issuing a shuddering breath. He pulls away from her slightly and whispers her name. She opens her eyes. He presses an open-mouthed kiss over her heart. His eyes never leave hers as he nuzzles her breast then kisses it slowly, circling around her before his mouth latches onto her nipple. She cannot keep her eyes open for the pleasure of it, her hands cradling his head against her as she feels the pull of his mouth reflected in the clenching of her womb, long undisturbed inside her. One of his elegant hands has come around to the front of her body and he covers the breast he has not drawn into his mouth, molding her, overwhelming her senses. She can hear her own sighs and murmurs of encouragement as she urges   
him to her other breast. She is bent backwards again, but this time by the languidness of her own sensual desire. 

His mouth falls away from her breasts and she feels him kissing the skin of her abdomen, a trail of sparks against her flesh. He picks her up and lays her on the bed. Everywhere he touches her she is warm, finally feeling the cold of these last weeks being banished by his hands and his mouth. He is unhurried in his movements, seemingly content to listen to her cry and whisper, legs and arms moving restlessly as he peels her clothes from her. She feels the heat, but she wants it everywhere, wants to feel the press of him against and inside of her. He is maddeningly distracted by each bit of skin he discovers; removing her sock and marveling at the fact that her foot is only slightly larger than his hand, cradling it. 

"Come here," she whispers, half-sitting up and reaching for him. He strips his remaining clothes off and crawls into her arms, his body flushed and ready for her. He bends down for a kiss, his pelvis finally making contact with hers. 

"Here," she says, arching up under him and taking him in her hand. He is resting his weight on his elbows, his hands cradling her head as he kisses her hairline. When she grasps him in her hand, his mouth opens in a silent groan and his head drops down next to her. She can feel his ragged breath against her skin. She kisses his temple and shifts lower in the bed, urging him inside of her with a nudge of her pelvis against the head of his rigid penis. He raises his head and looks   
down at her with an expression of disbelief as she feels him begin to slide into her body.

 

*~* 

He moves his hands in her hair and her eyes flash up at him. They are the colour of the darkest depths of the unfathomable ocean just now, and he is sinking, sinking ... but this time he knows exactly where he is, grounded in her. As he moves above and within her, he is shedding the sorrow that has followed him like a shadow all these years. He smiles at her, then bends to kiss her, closing the circuit between them, connecting to her in every way possible. He is spilling outside of himself, the feelings in him too vast to be contained. 

~*~

 

She has never felt this way before, never had the sense of sharing a skin with another person. She feels him moving inside her and the last vestige of the coldness that has resided in her for so long is melting, trickling away from her, leaking out through her pores. All the cruelty that she has seen, the horror of mundane and casual brutality, she had encapsulated inside herself like a stone in her soul. The weight of these things has been like an abscess, burning like   
frostbite. She was sure that there would be no remittance from this pain, that there was no force on earth strong enough to drive out what has been done to her. Now, however, she is being confronted by a form of elemental alchemy, transforming her from something singular into something complex. She raises her head to kiss him, needing to feed this feeling that is building within her.

He is chanting to her now, words of love and promise pouring out over each other urgently as he moves faster, compelling her on with him. She tips her pelvis up to feel him more sharply, pulling her legs higher. He groans at the new angle, the sound a warning. The sight of him so close to ecstasy, his face a grimace of pleasure, and the knowledge that this is something he feels because of her, runs through her like a wave and she finds herself right on the edge. He whispers   
that he loves her, loves her, loves her and she knows that it is true, knows that it is forever, then she feels the heat as she surges out of herself in a blazing white hot flash. From a distance, she can hear the sound of him groaning as he erupts, another burst of heat inside her. 

He is watching her when she opens her eyes and he bends to kiss her, his hands cradling her head. He has tears in his eyes but he is smiling, a mixture of pride and awe on his face. He loves her and she can feel it radiating through her everywhere. He is still supporting his weight on his trembling arms, but she pulls him down on top of her, wrapping her arms and legs around him. She wants him to feel this, wants him to be aware of her surrounding him when she says the   
words. She can feel his smile against her neck as she tells him that she loves him, as she promises him forever. 

As their bodies begin to cool, she realizes they are not under the covers. He is a solid weight atop her, his breathing steady and even. She rubs his back to rouse him from his post-orgasmic daze. He kisses her as they part. 

When they meet under the covers, she kisses him on the chest before she turns, lying on her side. He curls around her, one arm clasping her at the waist, the other tucked under the pillow they are sharing. As she falls asleep, he is peppering her neck with kisses.

She dreams that he is making love to her, his hands and his mouth raining fields of tiny stars all around her. He is pressing their radiant light under her skin, to keep her warm forever.

 

*~*

The ashes are dissipating as they drift along the cliff face. Not many of them will make it to the sea. Fewer still will settle on the rocks that stand lonely sentry against the surging tide, far below. He has a sudden impulse to fling the urn itself into the deep waters off the edge of the island but he does not act upon it. He has wasted too much of his life on impotent rage. He looks inside the urn. It is only an empty vessel. She looks at him with a hesitant expression, as if she is unsure about what to do next. He has let go of her hand to complete his task. As the ashes dissolve in the mournful wind, he claims her hand again and watches her as she looks out over the ever-changing sea. After years of wandering and searching for his family, he has finally come home. 

*~*

end

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in March 2000.
> 
> Author's Extremely Long Notes:
> 
> The myths and tales that I relate in this story are part of the Aquinnah Wampanoag oral tradition. The Aquinnah Wampanoag (the People of the First Light) live on Martha's Vineyard (Noepe), primarily in the up-island towns of Aquinnah (formerly referred to as Gay Head), Chilmark and West Tisbury. 
> 
> The character of Jacob Lester is based on the storyteller from whom I first heard these tales. The fox lore (as Jacob says) is not associated with the Wampanoag, but is more common to the western tribal nations. The Celtic myth of Dana and the minor corruption of the Greek myth of Danae that I obliquely refer to are also consistent with historical renderings of those ideas. 
> 
> This story is one possible explanation of why Mulder is the way he is: capable of seeing many worlds in one, accepting of a multitude of ideas. Martha's Vineyard is an unusual place to have grown up in. Its year-round population of about 15,000 people is surprisingly ethnically diverse for small town, rural New England with the Wampanoag, Europeans and Cape Verdeans intermingling for generations. It is a place of striking beauty, full of fresh water ponds and bogs, vineyards, forests and moors -- all surrounded by the incredible ocean. It is impossible to describe how beautiful Aquinnah actually is, but I tried to convey it to you. 
> 
> The only factual error in this story that I am aware of is this: there is no lifeguard at Aquinnah. It is, however, a nude beach as are many of the up-island beaches on the Vineyard.
> 
> Thanks to Suzanne for the editing, the structural assistance and the general willingness to help me. Thanks to Miss Moe for the back-up and the support.


End file.
